


the reckoning

by littlethiefs



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, One-Shot, This Is Sad, but dara's love for nahri is established and touched on, i cried while writing it, lots of pre-chapter 31 empire of gold spoilers, set during empire of gold, uh this isn't a shippy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlethiefs/pseuds/littlethiefs
Summary: Set during Empire of Gold.Dara has to face what he's done.
Relationships: Darayavahoush e-Afshin/Nahri e-Nahid
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	the reckoning

_ “Wake up.” _

Dara’s eyes snapped open, gasping for breath as pain shot through every fiber of his prone body. When he moved his hand to wipe the ash beading on his skin, he saw the tendrils of black poison crawling up his veins, like his very blood had turned to liquid iron. Panic flared inside him and Dara sat up. The coup. The emir had orchestrated a coup and had poisoned him with iron, so how could he still be alive? 

He looked around, realizing he was in a clearing that looked familiar yet not. The grass was burnt and dead, wilted flowers dotting the ground over earth that looked cracked and barren. The trees were bare, crisped black, smoldering embers swirling on their trunks. Something was falling from the crimson sky, soft and gentle like snow, but when Dara reached out a feeble hand, ash fell onto his open palm. Slowly, painfully, he got to his feet and only when he was standing did he hear the screams in the distance, piercing shrieks that had him running before he knew what was happening, with only one thought in his mind.  _ The Daevas _ . His  _ people _ . 

He ran through the line of dead trees, unsteady on his feet, not thinking about how he shouldn’t be alive, how he shouldn’t be able to move with poison pumping through his veins, just thinking that he was getting closer and closer to the screams until he was getting further and further away, and when he broke the line of trees on the other side… he found himself back in the clearing. He stopped in his tracks, pausing for a split second, before he was off again. Running to the shrill screams of the dying until he was back where he started. Dara ran ash-covered hands through his hair. A scream of helpless frustration erupted from his lips as he looked around for something, anything -- 

\-- and then he saw someone. A silhouette leaning against one of the trees in front of him, arms crossed, looking comfortable and unbothered. Shadows swirled around him, whoever he was. Dara began to sprint again, the pain in his body getting worse with every step he took, making him limp and gasp with agony. As he approached, he began to discern the man’s -- no, the boy’s -- features through the smoke: curly hair framing a sharp face, thick brows settled over fathomless black eyes. Daeva. Young. Handsome. Dara stopped in his tracks, his heart beating feebly in his chest as if it were about to stop. Impossible.

“Wh- What is this?” He asked, his voice sounding hoarse and broken to himself.

The boy gave him a smile, a cruel and cutting thing that made every hair on Dara’s body stand on edge. The shadows melted away from the boy’s body, and he stood straight. “This?” He mocked, stepping closer to Dara with a malicious glint in his eyes, eyes that Dara wanted to look away from. Dara stared at the younger version of himself, who threw back his head and laughed a cold, mirthless laugh before it said, “This is the reckoning.”

Dara swallowed, the taste of metal rising in his mouth as if the iron had made its way into the capillaries of his cheeks. The words took a moment to register and when they did, the dawning came all at once. He had been here in the past. But the place he’d visited twice before had been razed and gutted. “Hell,” he whispered.

“Heaven, hell… technicalities that do not truly matter now,” the boy said, appraising Dara with a sick amusement. “We are both exactly where we have always deserved to be.” Dara took a step back, feeling nauseous and dizzy, the sounds of screams ringing in his ears. He looked at the boy in front of him, his unlined face and wide eyes, the eyes Dara hadn’t seen in his own face for centuries upon centuries, not since he’d drowned in a well and awoken with a green emerald on his finger.

The boy suddenly brought his hands together, a look of excitement crossing his face. “Remember when you were a child, Baba would send you to bed but you would sneak out and listen to the conversations he had with Maman. And he would talk of his worries, how he felt the end of times was approaching, how another Suleiman would come to the earth and rid the world of daevas once and for all because some djinn,” he spat the word with such viciousness that Dara flinched, “could not control themselves around humans. Remember when you vowed that you would never let that happen?”

Dara closed his eyes, the image playing on his eyelids. Of whispered conversations between his parents, as Dara had stood behind a door and listened intently, letting the words wash over him, settling around his heart and mind like a cage, that vow charting the course of his life ever since. 

“You were so  _ convicted _ . Growing up on stories of heroes and loyalty and honor and sacrifice does that, I suppose.” The boy continued. “But every hero needs his villain, and what better villain than one who does not have a soul? Whose entire existence is to deceive and manipulate, to usher in the destruction of your people? What a villain that is.” Dara clenched his fists and opened his eyes.

“Please. Stop.”

“When they told you of Qui-zi, did you not stop and wonder if it was wrong?”

“I was a boy.” Dara’s voice cracked as he said it, desperation crawling through him. It was what he’d told himself ever since the gates of the city had shut behind him.

“How old does one have to be to know murder is wrong?” The boy cocked his head to look at Dara, narrowing his eyes. “Oh, but you never saw it as murder, did you? Soulless deceptions, walking and talking husks parading as people. Creator bless the Nahids and their infinite wisdom!” He laughed again and Dara felt his own expression crumble in return. “Did you truly believe it?”

“I did,” Dara said quietly. Truthfully. Even to himself, he sounded like he was begging.

“We did,” the boy agreed. “Do you believe it now?” 

The wound from the iron bullet a Tukharistani woman had removed from his shoulder seemed to sear with pain, and Dara bit his lower lip to stop himself from crying out. A shafit woman holding a gun to his temple, defiant, with medical tools strapped to a belt, hatred burning in her face. The bodies he’d left on the hospital roof strewn about, black blood and crimson blood dripping from his clothes. 

Another woman with fathomless black eyes and rounded ears, the one with the sharp tongue and the coy smile, the one he thought of with every breath, with every blink of his eye. Her hands under his as he taught her how to throw knives, her laugh carrying on the wind, her palm brushing against his cheek. The one who he’d loved and he’d lost.

Dara took another step back, choosing to focus his attention on the screams. “Who are they?” He asked. The boy gave him another smirk.

“It’s the shafit and the djinn we killed, who else?” Dara’s breath left him in a ragged hush, and the boy’s smile widened. He pointed a finger to his own chest. “I was the one who bathed Qui-zi in its own blood,” he said, and the words felt so wrong coming from the boy’s lips. His eyes, cruel as they were now, were still the eyes of a boy. Looking at him, Dara felt like he had another’s blood on his hands. “But the djinn in Daevabad? The Geziri travelers?  _ That _ was you.”

“I had no choice-”

“Neither of us has ever been a good liar,” the boy said. Dara listened to the screams, tears swimming in his eyes. He saw it all in front of him. The palace grounds, bodies littering the floor, toys and firesticks strewn on the grass. Torn silks fluttering in the wind while Qui-zi burned, the smell of soot and blood invading his senses. Shoes scattered on the floor, carts upended, while he stood with a silver bow strapped to his back. A demon. A dealer of death come knocking. All those people-

_ People _ . He reached out and steadied himself by grasping the boy’s shoulder, his vision blurring. 

“They have given you many names over the years. Afshin. Scourge. Monster. Some foolish Daevas like to call you a Savior, but-” and he leaned in as if he were about to whisper a secret to Dara, “-but what will they say when they find out you have Daeva blood on your hands too? All those Daevas that were killed when you were in exile, all because of what  _ you _ did? Our family? Our  _ sister _ ? Do you hear them scream?” 

Dara jerked away as the boy laughed. “Tamima!” He yelled, looking around in empty desperation. “Help me find her, please.” He begged, turning back to the boy who was looking at him now with open hatred.

“I did what I did fourteen centuries ago in Tukharistan and lost everything for it,” he hissed, anger blazing in his features. “And then you went and did it again. We could have left. We could have gotten out, but  _ you _ fucked up, and  _ you _ brought us here.”

“I’m sorry,” Dara sobbed, falling to his knees before himself. Everything he’d ever done seemed to crash into him all at once. The blood he had on his hands, the people he’d killed, the families and lives he’d destroyed now chipping away at the last pieces of any soul he had left. Ash fell around him, and the boy looked on with wild eyes, mad eyes that had seen too much and not enough all at once. “Help me find her, I beg of you.” He cried. “Tamima!”

“Run to her,” the boy said, offering Dara one last smile that twisted something in Dara’s gut. “Maybe you’ll find her in the eternity you will spend here.” And then he vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind the scent of rot. Dara scrambled to his feet and began to run again, hoping against hope that he would get to her, screaming his sister’s name while he did so. 

“Tamima!” He ran. And he ran. And he ran. All while never getting anywhere. 

“Tamima!” Blood and death and darkness. Scourge. Monster.  _ Murderer _ . 

“Tamima...” And he would never see his sister again, and he would never see Nahri again, and he would exist with the screams of the dead sounding everywhere around him, driving him mad if he wasn’t mad already.

Perhaps it was hours later. Perhaps it was years later. Lightning flashed across the sky. Wracked with pain, Dara looked up to see tree branches shaking with the force of the wind now ripping through the sky. Ash swirled around him, making him retch with the stench. And then it was ripping through him, getting into his ears and his mouth and his nose, and Dara choked before he felt the ground pull away from beneath his feet. And then he was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> NGL this was kind of inspired by astarisms's tweet about why Dara was shouting Tamima's name when he died during EOG. And I always wanted to write a fic where Dara looks at his past dead in the eye (literally lol), and thought this was a good way to do it.


End file.
